1121 microsoft system center 2012 service manager cookbook

Table of ContentsPreface 1 Introduction 7Understanding ITSM frameworks 8ITIL© processes 9Creating an Asset Management process 10Creating a Configuration Management System CMS process 13C

Microsoft System

Center 2012 Service Manager Cookbook

Learn how to configure and administer System Center

2012 Service Manager and solve specific problems and scenarios that arise

Microsoft System Center 2012 Service Manager Cookbook

Copyright © 2012 Packt Publishing

All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,

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First published: October 2012

Proofreaders Elinor Perry-Smith Lesley Harrison

Indexer Tejal R Soni

Graphics Valentina D'silva Aditi Gajjar

Production Coordinators Prachali Bhiwandkar Manu Joseph Cover Work Prachali Bhiwandkar

About the Authors

Samuel Erskine (MCT) has over 15 years' experience in a wide range of technologies and industries (public and private) including working for fortune 500 organizations In 2009 he founded a consultancy practice organization in the United Kingdom focused on implementing Microsoft System Center systems management and IT Service management products He merged the United Kingdom organization with Syliance IT Services in 2012 and became the third member of the Syliance global management team He is a Computer Engineering graduate and holds various technology vendor/industry certifications He is an active participant in the System Center community with a blog at www.frameworktorealwork.com

Thanks to Jungfraubahnen Management AG (http://www.jungfrau.ch/)

for the Photo of "Top of Europe"

Anders Asp (MVP) started his IT career working with storage and backup solutions, but discovered Service Manager back in 2009 and has been working full time with the product ever since He is currently working at a Swedish company named Lumagate as a Service Manager Specialist and Product Manager He also teaches the official Service Manager course at the two largest training centers in Sweden and has presented at several large events

He is very active on the official Service Manager forums at TechNet and regularly blogs about the product on his own blog at www.scsm.se In April 2012, he was awarded with the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) title in the "System Center Cloud and Datacenter Management" area

Andreas Baumgarten (MVP), IT Architect with the German IT service provider H&D International Group, has worked as an IT pro for more than 20 years Microsoft technologies have always accompanied him and he can also look back on 14 years of experience as a Microsoft Certified Trainer.

Since 2008, he has been responsible for the field of System Center technology consulting and ever since he took part in SCSM 2010 and 2012 and System Center Orchestrator 2012 Technology Adoption Program with H&D

With his deep inside technology know-how and his broad experience across the System Center product family and IT management, he now designs and develops Private Cloud solutions for customers all over Germany

In October 2012, he was awarded with the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) title for "System Center Cloud and Datacenter Management"

Steve Beaumont has been working in IT since 1998, working his way through the ranks starting with low-end system building and support through to managing a crack team of enterprise class support specialists, and to now provide consultancy and designs for System Center 2012 and Private Cloud solutions

With the release of Service Manager 2010, he ventured into the dark side of customization and released some solutions to the community via the TechNet Gallery helping to show how

to extend the usage of the product

He also runs his own blog (http://systemscentre.blogspot.com) covering the full range of System Center components and areas related to desktop design, deployment, and optimization

Dieter Gasser is an IT Consultant and co-founder of the company Syliance IT Services, headquartered in Switzerland, and specializes in Service Manager delivery and customization

He has been working in IT for more than 13 years and has had a strong focus on Microsoft technologies He started his career as an application and database developer, and was later appointed IT Manager for an international manufacturing company

In 2010 he entered the systems management and automation market With his technical and managerial background, he has been focusing on Service Manager ever since Together with his

About the Reviewers

Stefan Allansson is a Service Manager Specialist and has worked as a Service

Manager consultant at Lumagate since the Beta version of Service Manager 2010

He is also the co-writer at the blog www.scsm.se and is active on the official Service

Manager forum, http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/

category/servicemanager

Steve Buchanan is currently an Infrastructure Consultant He has 12 years of hands-on experience in Information Technology and an integrated understanding of how information systems, networks, and people work together to achieve business objectives As a Microsoft System Center Cloud and Datacenter Management MVP, he is among the highly select group

of experts that represent the technology's best and brightest, who share a deep commitment

to community and a willingness to help others He has authored Data Protection Manager

2010 and is an author of the upcoming Data Protection Manager 2012 book with other

System Center MVPs

He holds the following certifications in A +, Linux +, MCP, MCSA, MCITP: Server Administrator, and MCTS: (Hyper-V, SharePoint 2007, SharePoint 2010, Exchange 2007, Vista)

His blog is located at www.buchatech.com

He is the author of Microsoft Data Protection Manager 2010.

Wayne Robinson has worked professionally in IT for over seven years, starting out on

a service desk at a local IT Consultancy, working his way up to deploying and managing thousands of devices; he has vast experience in Windows Server, Windows Client, and the Systems Center Suite He spent most of his IT career at a local authority where he managed

a wide range of devices through Configuration Manager, Service Manager, and Operations Manager He now works as a Technical Architect for a firm based in York

I would like to thank Steve Beaumont and Sam Erskine for the opportunity

to work with them on such a great publication

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Table of Contents

Preface 1

Introduction 7Understanding ITSM frameworks 8ITIL© processes 9Creating an Asset Management process 10Creating a Configuration Management System (CMS) process 13Creating a Service Request Fulfillment process 15Creating an Incident and Problem Management process 17Creating a Change and Release Management process 21Creating an IT Service Desk process 25Service Level Management process 27

Chapter 2: Personalizing SCSM 2012 Administration 29

Introduction 29Configuring how long to keep your SCSM data 30Configuring the Incident Management global settings 34Configuring the Service Requests, Activity, Release, Knowledge,

and Change Management global settings 37Configuring the behavior of child incidents when resolving, reactivating,

and closing the parent Incident 41Configuring Priority and Urgency for your SLA targets 43Configuring global e-mail notification infrastructure settings 46Creating Management Packs in the Authoring tool to save your

SCSM personalization 48Creating formatted e-mail notification templates 54Creating a basic queue 60

Chapter 3: Configuring Service Level Agreements (SLAs) 63

Introduction 64Creating Priority Queues 64Configuring business hours and non-working days 71Creating SLA metrics 74Creating Service Level Objectives 75Creating Incident Management SLAs 80Creating Service Request SLAs 82Viewing SLA warning and breaches 86Creating notifications for SLA warning and breaches 88Creating repeated notifications before SLA breaches with escalation 97

Chapter 4: Building the Configuration Management Database (CMDB) 105

Introduction 106Adding configuration items manually 106Importing active directory configuration items 107Importing Configuration Manager configuration items 111Importing Operations Manager configuration items 115Importing Virtual Machine Manager configuration items 119Importing Orchestrator runbooks 124Using a CSV file to import items into the CMDB 128Creating a business service 134Personalizing and organizing configuration item views 136Creating a configuration item group 139

Chapter 5: Deploying Service Request Fulfillment 143

Introduction 143Creating Support Groups for Service Requests 144Creating Service Request templates 148Creating Service Request activities 151Creating Service Offering categories 157Creating Service Catalog Request offerings 159Creating Service Catalog Service offerings 167Publishing Service offerings and Request offerings 176Working with Service Requests in the portal 183Creating Service Request notifications 187

Chapter 6: Working with Incident and Problem Management 193

Introduction 193Configuring Incident and Problem lists 194Creating an Incident template 198Adding a task to the Incident form 201

Table of Contents

Creating a workflow to notify the affected user upon the creation

of an Incident 205Creating a view to display the Problem Records created in the last 30 days 210Configuring the Global Operators Group 214Downloading, installing, and configuring the Exchange Connector 218Making the description field in the Incident form to auto grow 222Extending the Incident class with a new property 226

Chapter 7: Designing Change and Release Management 233

Introduction 233Creating and configuring Change Request Templates 234Creating and managing Change Management Review Activities 238Creating Manual Activities for Change Management 243Creating and managing Dependent Activities in Change Management 247Creating and personalizing Change Management Parallel Activities 251Creating and personalizing Change Management Sequential Activities 255Creating and personalizing Change Management Activity notifications 259Creating and managing Build and Environment Release Records 265Creating and managing Release Record Templates 268Working with Change Requests and Release Records 273

Introduction 283Viewing basic settings for Security roles 284Adding users to the End User role 287Creating and managing Service Request roles 289Creating and managing Incident Management roles 296Creating and managing Problem Management roles 302Creating and managing Change and Release Management roles 306Creating hybrid roles 308Configuring the self-service catalog security role 310Listing SCSM security role details with PowerShell 316

Introduction 322Viewing SCSM reports 323Creating Favorite and Linked Reports 327Creating reports with Report Builder 329Configuring report permissions 340Delivering reports automatically using report subscriptions 343Analyzing data with Microsoft Excel 348

Chapter 10: Extending SCSM with Advanced Personalization 361

Introduction 362Using the SCSM Authoring Tool 363Extending Service Manager classes 367Sealing management packs 373Creating new classes 377Customizing default forms 384Creating your own forms 390Using an XML editor to modify management packs 394

Chapter 11: Automating Service Manager 2012 399

Introduction 399Routing Incidents automatically using workflows 399Downloading and installing SMLets 403Using SMLets to delete a Work Item 406Export your unsealed Management Packs using the Service

Manager cmdlets 410Creating a custom workflow in the Authoring Tool – export your unsealed

Management Packs 411Autoclose resolved Incidents with SMLets and a custom workflow 417Automating your Request Offerings with Orchestrator 421

Appendix A: Community Extensions and Third-party Commercial

Introduction 435Provance® – IT Asset Management, Data Management, and Bar Code for

Microsoft® System Center 435Derdack Enterprise Alert® 438Seven-Winds Call Script Manager 439WebFront for Service Manager 2012 442

Appendix B: Useful Websites and Community Resources 443

Introduction 443Useful community blogs 443Frameworks and processes 444Valuable community forums and user groups 444Websites for SCSM solutions and extensions 445Online Wikis 446Social network resources 446

System Center 2012 Service Manager builds on its predecessor System Center Service Manager 2010, by extending the ITIL© process features to include Service Request fulfillment, Release Management, and automated orchestration with significant enhancements in its reporting capabilities The full set of additions and improvements can be found at the official Microsoft website for the product

System Center 2012 Service Manager (SCSM) is a modular product made up of a series

of submodular components Installing the product is simple using the official product

documentation and online community resources

The post-installation phase requires you to plan and configure the product in a methodical sequence The aim of the book is to address the challenges faced by many first-time users of SCSM post-installation, and also to share valuable insight from real-world implementations.The book is written in the Packt style, which provides the reader with independent

task-oriented steps to achieve specific SCSM objectives The authors recommend that you read the first two chapters as a background for subsequent chapters, if you are new

to SCSM and process-oriented software products The book may be read in the order of interest, but where relevant, the authors refer to dependent recipes in other chapters

What this book covers

Chapter 1, ITSM Frameworks and Processes, aims to provide a background to ITSM

frameworks with a particular focus on the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL©) and Microsoft Operations Framework (MOF) The objective is to explain the relevant key areas of these frameworks and how they relate to Service Manager as a solution

Chapter 2, Personalizing SCSM 2012 Administration, covers the initial process dependent

critical settings and tasks a Service Manager administrator would need to configure after successfully installing the product

Chapter 3, Configuring Service Level Agreements (SLAs), delves into the Service Level

Agreement areas of Service Manager 2012 and provides you with recipes, which simplify the implementation of this complex topic

Chapter 4, Building the Configuration Management Database (CMDB), shows Service

Manager Administrators how to build the SCSM 2012 Configuration Management Database (CMDB) The recipes in this chapter include various options, from a manual approach, right through to automating the importing of information from external systems

Chapter 5, Deploying Service Request Fulfillment, focuses on Service Requests in Service

Manager 2012 These recipes will show the reader how to set up the underlying components and all the steps required to present Service Requests to end users as catalog items in the Self-Service Portal

Chapter 6, Working with Incident and Problem Management, takes two core features

of Service Manager, Incident and Problem Management, and provides recipes that will accelerate the reader's knowledge and implementation of these vital ITSM processes

Chapter 7, Designing Change and Release Management, provides recipes for Change

and Release Management in SCSM A modular approach is provided to aid the readers understanding of the mechanics of this complex organization specific processes

Chapter 8, Implementing Security Roles, simplifies one of the least understood areas of

System Center 2012 Service Manager, the role-based security module

Chapter 9, Reporting, provides the recipes required to expose the wealth of information stored

within Service Manager using the supported reporting interfaces to the product

Chapter 10, Extending SCSM with Advanced Personalization, contains the recipes to take

a standard SCSM deployment to an organization-specific personal implementation, using supported Authoring and Development Tools SCSM is an extendible product but requires expert knowledge of the product's internal mechanisms

Chapter 11, Automating Service Manager 2012, takes Service Manager to the next level

by providing you with recipes that introduce automation of the ITSM processes in scope of the product

Appendix A, Community Extensions and Third-party Commercial SCSM Solutions, presents

a brief summary of some of the most requested and useful extensions to SCSM as solutions from trusted Microsoft Partners SCSM, similar to most Microsoft products, has an extended solutions partner community

Appendix B, Useful Websites and Community Resources, is the SCSM administrator's

directory of online resources

What you need for this book

In order to complete all the recipes in this book you will need a minimum of three servers configured with System Center 2012 Service Manager RTM

Server 1: System Center 2012 Service Manager management server hosting the CMDB and workflow role

Server 2: System Center 2012 Service Manager management server hosting the data

warehouse role

Server 3: System Center 2012 Service Manager management server hosting the SharePoint based self-service portal

The required software and deployment guides of System Center 2012 Service Manager can

be found at the official Microsoft website available at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh495575.aspx

The authors recommend using the online Microsoft resource due to the frequency of updates

to the product's supported requirements

Who this book is for

The target audience of this book is SCSM administrators and process owners responsible for implementing the ITSM processes in scope of the product The recipes in this book range from beginner level to expert level SCSM administration knowledge The ultimate goal is to provide the reader with knowledge to enhance their existing skills, and more importantly to share real-world experience from seasoned technology implementers

Conventions

In this book, you will find a number of styles of text that distinguish between different kinds of information Here are some examples of these styles, and an explanation of their meaning.Code words in text are shown as follows: "One generic form is bound to the System.Entity

class, which ultimately all the classes inherit from."

A block of code is set as follows:

Any command-line input or output is written as follows:

Import-Module 'C:\Program Files\Microsoft System Center 2012\Service Manager\Powershell\System.Center.Service.Manager.psd1'

$RootPath = C:\Service Manager MP Backup\

$Date = Get-Date

$Path = $RootPath + $Date.ToString(yyyy-MM-dd)

New terms and important words are shown in bold Words that you see on the screen, in menus or dialog boxes for example, appear in the text like this: "When the import process is finished, click on OK."

Warnings or important notes appear in a box like this

Tips and tricks appear like this

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ITSM Frameworks

and Processes

This chapter provides a background into the creation of processes aligned with ITIL©

and MOF (Microsoft Operations Framework) principles, and explains some of the key

areas and how they relate to Service Manager; specifically we will cover the following areas:

f Understanding ITSM frameworks

f ITIL© processes

f Creating an Asset Management process

f Creating a Configuration Management System (CMS) process

f Creating a Service Request Fulfillment process

f Creating an Incident and Problem Management process

f Creating a Change and Release Management process

f Creating an IT Service Desk process

f Service Level Management process

Introduction

System Center 2012 Service Manager (SCSM) is built on the principles of the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL©) and the operational principles of the Microsoft

Operations Framework (MOF) This chapter discusses the operational execution of

these principles in real world implementations

There are various books and online resources available to you on ITIL© and MOF

The authors recommend you review and research the principles of ITIL© and MOF

The goal of creating processes regardless of the framework, is to move your organization

or teams from using individual flexible approaches, to using an agreed uniform policy-driven best practice approach to meet your objectives This approach is usually described as process maturity

ITIL© is commonly described as an industry recognized process framework MOF is the Microsoft standard for the execution of the processes typically using (but not limited to) Microsoft products

Understanding ITSM frameworks

This recipe provides a summary analysis of the ITSM frameworks in general and what they mean to each organization

Getting ready

A general understanding of the objectives of standards and frameworks is required for this recipe

How to do it

Plan to invest in one or more of the following:

f Buy this book

f Research the subject of frameworks using your preferred method of learning

f Attend an accredited training course in the subject

f Adopt and adapt frameworks to your specific organization needs, strategies, and capabilities

How it works

IT Service Management is a broad term used to describe a process-focused approach

to IT management The goal for most organizations is to implement a service-focused approach to deliver IT dependent services to the end customer

The industry standard approach for achieving the ITSM objective is to use best-in-class standards as a guide Examples of common industry frameworks include, but are not limited to, the following:

f Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL©)

f Microsoft Operations Framework (MOF)

f Core Practice

Chapter 1

Frameworks are guides and can be compared to the rules of a game (for example, Soccer)

In a game, the rules provide a consistent approach but do not limit the individual or team strategy Another critical factor is individual creativity, which is championed and often leads

Plan to do one or more of the following:

f Attend one or more ITIL© training courses in the recommended order

f Invest in the ITIL© official book(s) and complementary books

f Use the vast free resources on the Internet

f Implement and improve your organizational ITSM processes using the

ITIL© knowledge as a guide

f Review and update your processes in line with organization strategies

and capabilities

How it works

ITIL© processes take a repeatable cyclic approach to organization IT Service Management underpinned by continual service improvements The ITIL© goals are aimed at ensuring that the organization:

f Plans for services

f Catalogue and track IT services

f Introduces new services with minimal risks

f Manages and operates active services consistently

f Performs maintenance and updates to existing services with minimum risk and maximum value to the business

The official phases of ITIL© are as follows:

f Service Strategy

f Service Design

f Service Transition

f Service Operation

f Continual Service Improvement

SCSM is a technology capability enabler of a subset of the ITIL© processes It is important

to follow the principle of: People, Processes, and Products SCSM is the product that

complements your organizations agreed processes and needs people to implement,

manage, and continually improve the overall IT service strategy

ITIL© implementation is not mandatory for SCSM deployment, but an understanding of ITIL© is recommended

See also

f Appendix B, Useful Websites and Community Resources provides a list of useful

websites for ITIL© and is highly recommended by the authors

Creating an Asset Management process

This recipe will provide steps for creating a sample Asset Management process

Getting ready

For this recipe the authors recommend you read up on the difference between asset inventory and asset management as an organizational process

How to do it

Asset Management is a life cycle process, which tracks an IT asset with its associated

financial data from when the asset is requested to when the asset is retired as shown

in the following figure:

Chapter 1

An example of the steps for creating an Asset management process is as follows:

1 Agree and document the organization's asset management policy

2 Document the operational process to support the asset management policy

3 Create and assign people roles to manage the process At a minimum you should plan to include the following:

‰ Hardware Asset Managers

‰ Hardware Asset Inventory agents

‰ Software Asset Managers

‰ Software Asset Inventory agents

4 Identify and agree on an asset register management system An asset register in its basic form is a manual process It should capture the following:

‰ IT Asset type

‰ Financial information

‰ Align the IT asset to its financial data

Input to a configuration Management system (CMS)

5 Implement Asset Management in SCSM using one of the following methods:

‰ Manually extend the Configuration Items (CI) class to include financial data for assets

‰ Purchase an asset management solution for SCSM (for example, Provance IT Asset Management Pack for SCSM)

6 Continually review the policy and operational process The goal of this step is to improve the process and ensure compliance

How it works

Asset Management begins and ends with people and ultimately can cost or add value to

a business A non-IT related analogy is the lessons from retail stock takes, which typically happen annually The stocktake is the best opportunity for a retail shop to get the most accurate figure for its profit or loss on stock Two forms of lost revenues are:

f Damaged goods

f Missing goods

IT asset management is the stocktake required for all your technological assets, and

its resultant analysis for intelligent decision making to provide factual compliance

measurements The IT equivalent of the stock take process is referred to as audits for

software and hardware SCSM with partner extensions or in-house authoring provides

80 percent of the Asset Management for the organization People and process critically account for the high value 20 percent

There's more

There are various tools (products) labeled as Asset Management tools The true Asset

Management tools should have the capability of tracking assets from order to decommission.Asset Management is an end-to-end process, and the tools are enablers of successful

implementation The successful Asset Management organization programs recognize

the full life cycle management of assets

f Active directory (AD)

f System Center Configuration Manager (ConfigMgr)

f System Center Operations Manager (OpsMgr)

This recipe is focused on how you create a CMS process with SCSM using AD, ConfigMgr, and OpsMgr

How to do it

An example of the steps for creating CMS process is as follows:

1 Plan to agree and document the organization configuration management policy

2 Document the operational process to support the configuration management policy

3 Create and assign people roles to manage the process

4 Install and configure the CMDB systems in scope (in this example, AD, ConfigMgr, and OpsMgr)

5 Add the AD capable assets to the AD CMDB

6 Discover the AD joined assets with ConfigMgr and deploy the ConfigMgr agent

7 Discover the AD joined assets with OpsMgr and deploy the OpsMgr agent

8 Configure the AD connector for SCSM and synchronize the data from AD with SCSM

9 Configure the ConfigMgr connector and synchronize the data from ConfigMgr

with SCSM

10 Configure the OpsMgr connector and synchronize the the data from OpsMgr

with SCSM

11 The CMS example structure is shown in the following figure:

How it works

SCSM addresses the technology requirements of a CMS process by providing a simplified and consistent framework for connecting multiple CMDBs In the example the three CMDBs provide information, which SCSM merges to provide a single view of the asset Using a database server as our asset example:

f AD provides the computer details and information registered in the AD CMDB

f ConfigMgr provides information on the hardware and software of the asset

(for example, 64-bit operating system with Microsoft SQL Server 2008)

f OpsMgr provides information on what databases are installed on the computerSCSM presents a consolidated view of this information to the analyst and is dynamically refreshed by the owner of the data

SCSM builds the ITIL© process on its CMDB, which is a dynamic CMS The CMS approach ensures that the data accuracy and management is performed at the source (AD, ConfigMgr, OpsMgr, or other supported connector) This approach removes the risk of data inconsistency typical of other systems where the IT Service Management (ITSM) tool does not automatically synchronize with CMDBs in scope

See also

f The Importing active directory configuration items recipe in Chapter 4, Building the Configuration Management Database (CMDB)

Chapter 1

f The Importing configuration manager configuration items recipe in Chapter 4, Building the Configuration Management Database (CMDB)

f The Importing Operations Manager configuration items recipe in Chapter 4,

Building the Configuration Management Database (CMDB)

Creating a Service Request Fulfillment

process

This recipe provides guidance on creating an organization Service Request

Fulfillment process

Getting ready

Service Request Fulfillment is typically a process put in place to support a proactive

approach to providing services to customers

How to do it

An example of the steps for creating a Service Request Fulfillment process is as follows:

1 Agree and document the organization Service Request Fulfillment policy

2 Document the operational process to support the Service Request Fulfillment policy

3 Create and assign people roles to manage the process

4 Create a service catalog of the organization services available to the end customers

5 Sort the services by categories An example of two category types are:

‰ Approval required services

‰ Non approval required services (standard services)

6 Agree and establish the organization supported channels for requesting services Examples of channels include the following:

‰ Phone calls into the service desk

‰ E-mail

‰ Self-service Web Portal

7 Publish the list of services and provide guidance on how to order services, including approval processes and costs

8 Provide training and guidance to the support teams responsible for service

9 Plan to review the process and improve the service based on customer feedback and technological advances.

An example of a Service Request Fulfillment process structure is shown in the following figure:

Self Service Web Portal

Inform Requestor

Approval Required Services

Approved

Deny Requested Service No Yes

How it works

A Service Request Fulfillment process aims to address the proactive goals of ITSM Some of the common objectives when establishing this process are to:

f Provide predictable services at a known cost

f Engage customers by using predictable published channels of service delivery

f Improve the change management processes A repeatable change request with a low risk known outcome may qualify for a published service request with a simpler approval process

f Provide visibility and proactive management of services in the service catalog.Service requests are typically requests for services that do not require change management, but may or may not require approval As an example, we can have a process for requesting access to a special printer or a request for premium software

In Incident Management we focus on restoring a service to its known mode of

operation before an unplanned interruption Problem Management requires you to

focus on understanding the actual cause of the interruption with the goal of providing

a permanent resolution

The ITIL© framework books and online resources discuss best practice for Incident and Problem Management processes You must plan to review and understand Incident and Problem Management principles as a prerequisite to creating the processes

How to do it

An example of the steps for creating an Incident and Problem Management process

is as follows

Incident Management

Here are the example steps specific to an Incident Management process:

1 Agree and document the organization incident management policy

2 Document the operational process to support the incident management policy This should include but not be limited to:

‰ Support hours

‰ Classification categories

‰ Escalation procedures

3 Create and assign people roles to manage the process For example:

‰ Service Desk analysts

‰ Desktop support

‰ Infrastructure analyst

‰ Service Desk managers

4 We typically have two channels for incident management:

Sample process steps from incident creation to priority allocation are shown

in the following figure:

‰ Automated or end user self-service created incidents (end user web

portal, e-mail, or automatic system event driven)

Sample process steps from incident creation to priority allocation are shown

in the following screenshot:

Chapter 1

5 The difference between the two typical channels is how the incident is initially categorized (triage) The next step "Process Incident" involves the creation of a process flow to match how the incident management team manage the incident based on your policies and procedures An example is shown in the following figure:

6 Monitor and report on the performance of the incident management process The aim is to improve the process and also identify incidents which require

Problem Management

Problem Management

Here are the example steps specific to a Problem Management process:

3 Create and assign people roles to manage the process For example:

‰ Problem analysts

‰ Problem managers

4 Review the Incident Management process with the aim of identifying instances

of the following type:

‰ Repeated issues over a defined period (for example, monthly, quarterly,

Incident Management is about getting services that people rely on back to an agreed

operational state as soon as possible An example of Incident Management is a customer who is unable to access their documents:

1 On investigation we find that the issue is with the laptop assigned to the customer

2 We issue the customer with a loan laptop and confirm access to their document.The previous steps will resolve the incident but we still have a problem What is wrong with the customer's laptop?

The answer to the question is Problem Management We use Problem Management to identify the true (root) cause of the issue Continuing with our scenario from Incident Management:

1 The desktop engineering team identify the issue as a network hardware device failure

in the laptop

2 The team also identify that this issue has been happening to a number of laptops over the last quarter

3 The team also identify through asset management that we purchase a set of

laptops from a vendor and all the issues relate to this set

4 We escalate to the vendor and get a driver fix

5 A change request is raised to proactively apply the fix to all laptops from the set.The fix applied to all laptops in scope resolves the issue on the original laptop We can close

the problem and also change the original status of the incident to close A final best practice

will be to create a knowledge article about this known issue and its corresponding fix

In Change Management we focus on enhancing existing services, service components,

or introducing new services and components without an unplanned interruption to existing services Release Management focuses on when the changes are implemented and manages planned interruption to services

The ITIL© framework online resources delve much deeper into the best practices for the Change and Release Management processes You must plan to review and understand

Change and Release Management principles as a prerequisite to creating the processes

‰ Change types and categories

‰ Change type priorities

‰ Policy owner

2 Create and continually update a service map for all services and applications in scope of Change and Release Management Examples include but are not limited

to the following types of services: infrastructure services, messaging, and

collaboration services A best practice industry approach is the RACI model:

‰ Responsible (R): Who is responsible for the service or service component?

‰ Accountable (A): Who is accountable for the service? This is typically the assigned business unit application owner

‰ Consulted (C): Who is consulted about the service operations? Typically

3 Document the operational process to support the Change and Release Management policy The operational procedures should include the following:

‰ Technical approvers and management approvers

‰ Plan for proxy approvers to cover expected or non-expected absence of main approvers

‰ Maintenance schedules (approved change implementation windows)

‰ Release process structure:

‰ Candidates for Service Request fulfillment (changes that have been

successfully validated as low risk and low impact based on an agreed number of successful implementation results)

‰ Changes requiring re-classification For example, a minor change that results

in a major outage due to an identified dependency service

‰ Release window adjustment due to a business process schedule change For example, a financial audit application used during peak accounting periods may require a special release window

6 The Change and Release Management process once established typically have the following operational states:

‰ Initiate

‰ Approve

f Technical (validation from a technical perspective)

f Management (validation from a cost and business risk perspective)

‰ Implement and Release

f Implementation steps and owners (who does it and how)

f Release schedule alignment (when it gets done)

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‰ Post implementation review For example:

f Successful in the time allocated

f Successful but overrun time allocated

f Failed

‰ Resubmissions

The following figure provides an example of the process from the change initiation stage:

f Categorization and classification

‰ What type of change, and how it impacts existing services?

‰ How important is the change?

f Approvals

‰ Who has the authority to approve?

‰ Who has the best knowledge on the impact and risk to the existing services?

‰ Cost justification

f Post implementation analysis

‰ Unplanned impact of changes

‰ Configuration management updates and service catalogue maintenance

‰ Lessons learnt (Knowledge management)

There's more

Release Management can be:

f Simple:

‰ Manage the forward change schedule

‰ Multiple changes that affect the same service component requires

coordination

‰ Multiple changes grouped and released during the same

maintenance window

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f Complex:

‰ Extension of application life cycle management

‰ New software developed in house

‰ Patch Management is a candidate for Release Management

Release Management is a discipline with broad and wide coverage Best practice for creating the process is; you should plan to assign a release management expert The process should also have a supported agreed organizational policy

Creating an IT Service Desk process

This section provides an example of what is typically required to create a Service

Desk process

Getting ready

Service Desks are organization specific but share a common goal The goal of most

Service Desks is to be the central point of contact for customers in the following areas:

f Request for services

f Unplanned outages or interruptions to services

f Feedback channels for improvement to existing services

f Coordination and tracking of active requests and incidents

A prerequisite for creating a Service Desk process is to define what role it would play in the overall ITSM strategy

Service Desks principles are defined in the ITIL© Service Operations books Plan to review the industry best practice before creating an organization specific version

How to do it

There are three main types of service desks

f Local Service Desk: Service desk in each customer geographic location,

independently managing support services

f Central Service Desk: One service desk that supports all geographic locations and offers a consolidated picture of issues and requests across the organization

f Virtual service Desk: Use technology to manage either of the first two types from

The successful service desk process is based on communication and coordination Here are some categories of tools you must plan to implement to support the process:

f Integrated Service Management and Operations Management systems

(For example, the Microsoft System Center Management product)

f Advanced telephony systems (For example, auto-routing, hunt groups,

Computer Telephony Integration (CTI), Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP))

f Interactive Voice Response (IVR) systems

f Electronic communication (Voice, video, mobile, intranet, Internet,

and e-mail systems)

f Knowledge, search, and diagnostic tools

f Automated operations and Network Management tools

Here are the common functions the service desk should aim to perform:

f Receive calls and act as the first-line customer liaison

f Record and track incidents and complaints

f Keep customers informed on request status and progress

f Make an initial assessment of requests, attempt to resolve them, or escalate

as appropriate

f Manage the request and issues life cycle, including closure and verification

f Communicate planned changes and disruption to services

f Coordinate hierarchical and functional escalations

f Highlight customer and service desk personnel training opportunities

f Monitor and track Service Level Agreements (SLA) and Operational Level

Agreements (OLA)

f Report on customer trends and service desk performance

How it works

The service desk process, once established, should deliver the following:

f Act to lower the total cost IT ownership

f Support the integration and management of the service portfolio and catalogue

f Make efficient use of resources and technology

f Optimize investments and the management of business support services

A service desk should aim to provide a unified and simplified experience to the customers

it serves

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Service Level Management process

Service Level Management (SLM) is the foundation and underpinning element of ITSM This recipe looks at the common input components of SLM and the deliverables of the process SLM typically can be applied internally, externally, or both The external application of SLM can be complex as it typically requires legal contracts with external providers outside an organization In this recipe our focus will be on the internal execution of SLM

Getting ready

SLM is a vital organization function The goal of SLM is to ensure that the customers'

expectations are met in line with formal published agreements We must be able to

consistently capture the inputs, and accurately report on the adherence or non-compliance

to the agreed SLM objectives We must have organization buy-in and a full understanding of SLM through official ITIL© material, or appropriate training in the SLM discipline

How to do it

SLM is the key to all processes and functions in ITIL© The common area in SLM is Service Level Agreements (SLA) We will use Incident Management and Service Request Fulfillment

as our functions in how to do it:

1 Agree and publish Service Level Agreements for Incident Management response times and resolution times The following table provides an example of the SLM inputs for five categories (priority) of incidents based on urgency and impact

The second table provides an example of the SLM inputs for the service

request fulfillment

Incident Priority Target First

Response Target Resolution Time